The Empire State of the South had its origin in the noblest impulses that swell the human heart. Its founder, the accomplished and philanthropic Oglethorpe, witnessing about him in the old world the inhumanity of man to man, seeing the prisons full of impecunious debtors, and the highways thronged with the victims of religious fanaticism and spite, resolved that he would find in the new world an asylum for the unfortunate ones where they should be no more oppressed by the rich or dragooned by the bigoted.
The colony started out beautifully. The men who had been pining in English jails because they could not pay the exactions of their hard-hearted creditors, and the Salzburgers and others, who, in Austria and Germany, had been made to feel the terrors of religious fanaticism, were glad to be free, and they were only too willing to accept the founder's will that there would be no slavery in Georgia. The institution got a foothold much later on, but it was not the fault of the original colonists.
Beautiful, too, were the initial relationships between the colonists and the red men. Old To-mo-chi-chi, the Chief of the surrounding Indians, presenting Oglethorpe with a Buffalo skin ornamented with the picture of an eagle, said to him: 'I give you this which I want you to accept. The eagle means speed and the buffalo strength. The English are swift as the bird and strong as the beast, since like the one, they flew over the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth, and, like the other, they are strong and nothing can resist them. The feathers of the eagle are soft and means love; the buffalo skin is warm and means protection. Then I hope the English will love and protect our little families.' Alas! the time was to come when the white man would forget To-mo-chi-chi's present and the spirit with which it was made.
In 1743 Oglethorpe left Georgia forever, after having given it the best that there was in his head and heart for ten years. In 1752 Georgia became a royal province, and remained such until the breaking out of the Revolution in 1775, through which she helped her sister colonies to fight their way to victory, when she took her place among the 'old thirteen' free and independent states."
[THE CONDITION OF GEORGIA DURING THE REVOLUTION.]
When the American Colonies of Great Britain determined to rebel at the stubborn demands of the mother country, Georgia had least cause to join the revolutionary movement.